I tried scraping it. I tried sanding it. Only thing that happen was that the sand paper immediately filled up with tar and became useless. The last time that I encountered this problem I ended up using a propane torch and a scrapper to remove it. This time I settled on using a stiff wire wheel on my angle grinder. Dust, pieces of tar and stray individual wires from the wheel flew in every direction. (But no blazes needed to be extinguished as in my past experiment.) It took more than two hours to clear an 8 square foot surface. Now I can sand and refinish the cart for its next life.
As usual, Babe was a big help in dealing with this project. The pallet top and the lights are also in progress and should be ready for the December sales.If you encounter a project involving this tar like substance, I suggest a nuclear attack. And even then I am afraid that, like the cockroaches, it may well survive.
Mr. Flannery
3 comments:
I tried for a whole darn summer to scrape that crap off my hardwood floor hallway and stairs that had been covered with red carpet. After using gallons of stipper and countless other tools I gave up and sanded it down as best I could. Put a thick layer of oil based paint on the stairs and re-carpeted the the upper and lower hallway in a more desirable color. This is one of several infractions my MIL did to this century old farmhouse during the 1970's-when it wasn't cool to have an old house.
Karen - I first encountered the crap in the first house we owned. It was a 1920's foresquare with tons of oak woodwork. The entry was covered by old red and black square linoleum tiles. We hired a contractor to remove it and restore all the floors in the house. I don't know how he did it but he had all the tr off in about 2 hours. The oak was not even discolored by the tar seeping into it.
Gasoline
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